Exposition in branching stories

Hvast

Hvast

Really Really Experienced
The very nature of a branching story creates a huge problem. Writer has to inform his readers about important stuff. Considering that a reader may follow only one branch, it seems like a good idea to include the same\simmilar bits of exposition in every branch or they will end up confused. But if you do this, you force people who read all branches to reread the variations of the same exposition again, and again, and again. It means torturing your most loyal readers with boredom.


How do you handle this?
 
Ooo, good question!

I can't think of a universal "oh my god why didn't I think of this one simple trick???" solution that makes the entire problem go away, but there may still be things you can do to mitigate it.

Unless if you're going in very different directions in your branches (for example, if they focus on very different and/or very niche kinks), I think it's OK to rely on your readers reading all branches. So if you have some important property of your world, it's fine to reveal one third of that feature in each of your 3 branches, and to let your readers piece things together along the way.

But I think even more important is that you probably don't need as much exposition as you think you do, especially up-front. For example, one of the main appeals of fantasy (my other home genre), is slowly uncovering how the world works. Authors don't start their stories with 10 pages of bone-dry descriptions of, say, the diplomatic relationships between the courts of the 3 main nations, or a diagram-laden explanation of the magic system. Instead, they trickle little bits and pieces of it throughout the story so that you learn about the world at the same time as you learn about the story. And they're usually not cold, hard facts handed to you by the hand of god (ie. the author), they can be mere hints presented by fallible characters who may be wrong or biased.

For example, in one series I adore, it's obvious from the outset that one particular mage is very different from all the other mages, but you're not shown why they're so different until you're over 1000 pages in. You've been left to wonder for hours and hours, speculating about the why and how, and it's an incredibly satisfying experience when it is finally revealed. If the author had instead shown that character's backstory in the very first chapter they're introduced, it would've been just another fact to remember.

And some things you don't need to clear up at all! Confusion isn't necessarily bad. I would even argue it's a good thing to leave some things totally mysterious. It insinuates there's a world beyond your main characters, events, and locations, making the whole thing seem more real, more alive.
 
I was literally discussing this the other day!
It’s tricky because it can also be fun exploring the dramatic irony of readers knowing details from other branches, while the characters remain oblivious due to “their” decisions.

I don’t really know the solution, but I think the best approach is to try to refine and streamline the exposition/info, while also varying your vocab around it.

Maybe in thread A, you described a the background and nature of a roving tribe of Orcs, giving a decent amount of detail because thread A involves the protagonist being taken to the tribe’s camp and experiencing it first hand.

Then, in thread B, the Orcs crop up again, but this time you could express the same or similar info through the lens of rumours and witnessing their actions from afar. Maybe even throw in a few “incorrect” pieces of lore to make it fit the theme of the info being a step removed.

Or, in thread C, you could avoid exposition about the Orcs entirely, simply having them as a scary, unexplored threat - that then makes thread A a little more special, as that’s where the perspective shifts and we find out that they actually enjoy knitting tea cosies and doilies.
 
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General worldbuilding exposition is not that much of a problem. You can have a good story with very little. You can have something explained in detail in one branch and completely omit any information in another. Both will work in a somewhat different style of storytelling.

The problem begins when you need exposition to explain the motives of your characters. If you don't provide enough information, you risk making your characters seem erratic, illogical, inconsistent, non-believable.
 
Hvast said:
The problem begins when you need exposition to explain the motives of your characters. If you don't provide enough information, you risk making your characters seem erratic, illogical, inconsistent, non-believable.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes. I agree that the plot of each individual branch needs to be a linear progression that stands on its own. Pretend the other branches don't even exist.

I don't think I've ever read any of your work, so I can't do any better than some educated guesses. That said...

If you keep having to establish the same motives, purpose, ethics of your characters, maybe you're branching too early, before you've established the points that underpin multiple branches?

Or maybe your branches are too similar, causing the same kinds of situations to crop up over and over again? If in branch A your character has to choose between fighting a dragon head-on or sneaking into its lair, and in branch B between setting off a bar brawl or cooling tensions, and in branch C between becoming a mercenary or, I dunno, the royal gardener, then yes, you have to keep motivating whether or not they prefer solving their problems with violence, but only because you keep presenting them with yes-violence no-violence problems.

Or maybe you're still trying to explain too much? The actions of your characters are themselves explorations of their motives, desires, and beliefs. If Mandy knocks over Johnny's beer and he retaliates by pummelling her mercilessly, it's not required to examine how he got to be so violent. It can be sufficient to establish that he just is, depending on what his role in the story is and what kind of story you're writing.

If I'm still way off the mark, then could you give some concrete examples of what you're struggling with?
 
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I want a generic discussion, not fixing some flaws of mine (also, my serious, hard-effort writing is not in English, linear, and not here.).

And it comes more from me being on the reader side than on the writer side. I made this thread after encountering the same exposition thrown at me a few times. I understand why the writer did this. And I am not sure if this is a proper thing to do or not. Readers who read one branch are not inherently more important than I, who usually reads everything in a story I choose to explore.
 
In my modest experience...it depends on how you're doing the branching.

There are some folks who write stories which has a main linear branch and then there are side-branches that are all still referring to the events of the main branch. In that case, the branches are dependent on each other.

Then there's how I normally do, where each branch is effectively its own self-contained story that isn't dependent on the other branches. Generally speaking, you should assume that the reader has read all the previous chapters on the branch, but not necessarily all the other chapters in the story, since things can get fairly divergent.

For ease of writing, I usually try to keep descriptions of main characters and locations consistent between branches, just because it makes it easier to visualize action and not contradict myself (which does sometimes happen.)
 
The underlying problem here is that situations where the readers know something the characters do not can get very tiresome. One imperfect approach I've seen is to essentially have an OOC lore chapter at the beginning or somewhere, and when a character learns that, then you link to it or expect the reader to go through it first.

Another is to essentially have two versions of the chapter, one with the exposition for first-time readers and a streamlined version which merge up afterwards.

Still another would be to just lore-dump like mad at the beginning before the branches, so you ensure people go through them at least once.

All in all, I've had this problem and never really come up with a perfect answer.
 
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